The present invention generally relates user interfaces and, in particular, to user interfaces of a software application for display on a touchscreen, and preferably a touchscreen of a mobile device such as an iPad.
Determining feature sets of a software application can be challenging. Making applications that are visually clean and functionally intuitive often means streamlining functionality and offering basic or otherwise limited feature sets. An application that is focused on accomplishing a particular result or performing a particular activity and designed with just features used to accomplish such result or perform such activity can be quick and easy to learn and use.
Applications for use in a mobile environment are a good example of this. An application designed for use in mobile environments typically is installed and used with other related applications, all of which can even be bundled together, with each application being a plugin or otherwise a narrowly focused application for accomplishing a particular result or performing a particular activity. This approach avoids the single monolithic application. Moreover, this practice is facilitated by the easy distribution of apps through ‘app stores’ making the delivery of targeted apps for specific workflows much more efficient for software vendors. Nevertheless, this benefit to overall application design leads to the detriment of the overall user experience, as the user will often need to close a current application and open a new one in order to accomplish the different result or perform the different activity using the other application.
At the other extreme, an application that accomplishes all of the goals conventionally is cluttered with features and typically is not visually streamlined, clean, or intuitive. In such monolithic applications, the categorization of features and functions are broken into submenus or buried hierarchies within a single, overarching, user interface. This often leads to incredibly complex software programs that don't provide users with intuitive ways of accomplishing tasks.
Nonetheless, such monolithic applications persist because applications that have many different feature sets collectively fulfilling many different use cases can have a broad and diverse market appeal to a large client base, and thus can be attractive to vendors. For these reasons, an application that may start out as a targeted application to a subset of clients also may evolve over the years toward a ‘one-size-fits-all’ application. As applications progress through their lifecycles, such feature creep can lead to extremely cluttered screens, making even the simplest of tasks more frustrating to perform.
An intended benefit of one or more aspects and features of the invention is the provision of an application that accomplishes a multitude of such disparate results or performs such disparate functions, which application is visually clean and functionally intuitive, wherein the application includes a plurality of different user interfaces each one being designed within the context of a respective particular result to be achieved or activity to be performed.
Additionally, an application may provide for different user roles, each user role having different access and use privileges. Moreover, the same person may have the ability to log into the application as one of a plurality of user roles; however, the person conventionally logs out of the application under one user role before the same person can log into the application under the other user role. In any event, the person generally must log in under a selected user role in order for that person to interact with the application within the context of the selected user role.
Another intended benefit of one or more aspects and features of the invention is the provision of an application that does not require a person to log out under one user role and then log back in under another user role for purposes of changing the context within which the person interacts with the application.